Buying Elections

Remember when it used to be considered really
corrupt to buy elections in this country? You’d have to be so old, you’ve
probably forgotten.

It was back in the prehistoric days of yore when
candidates could sometimes hope to be elected without spending absolutely
ridiculous amounts of money, either their own or somebody else’s.

The possibility of a millionaire buying an election
is back in the news as Democrat Mary Burke, with a background as a business
executive, philanthropist and former state secretary of commerce, considers
running against Republican Gov. Scott Walker next year.

Wisconsin has a checkered record with self-funded,
wealthy candidates entering politics, ranging from highly successful to total
public embarrassments.

Wisconsin millionaire Herb Kohl demonstrated how
buying an election with your own money could not only be respectable, but
desirable.

When professional politicians attacked Kohl in 1988
for trying to buy the U.S. Senate election, he turned it into a virtue.

Kohl pointed out he didn’t need to accept any money
from corporations and lobbyists who gave millions to professional politicians
in exchange for political favors that weren’t in the public interest. So Kohl
would be “Nobody’s Senator But Yours.”

It worked brilliantly. Kohl, an intelligent, low-key
Democratic senator, won four terms and regularly polled as the most popular
politician in Wisconsin.

The history of other state millionaires buying
elections wasn’t so pretty. Republican Ron Johnson, a little-known Oshkosh
plastics company executive, defeated Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold during the
tea party wave election of 2010.

Johnson spent his millions to flood Wisconsin
television with slickly produced biographical ads presenting himself as a kindly,
gray-haired business leader who knew how to create jobs during the second worst
economic crisis in the last 100 years in America.

It wasn’t until Johnson arrived in Washington that
Wisconsin found out who he really was—a mean-spirited, right-wing extremist
who’s voted consistently against job creation, health care and anything to
improve the lives of anyone other than millionaires.

Perhaps the most transparent attempt by a
millionaire to buy an election was that of hedge fund manager Eric Hovde, whose
spending had him briefly rising in Republican polls last summer as a possible
successor to Kohl.

Hovde hadn’t even lived in the state for 24 years
before moving back to run. After Republican voters saw through him, he
immediately disappeared again.

Jobs, Education and Women’s Rights

So, who is Mary Burke—a person of substance with the
resources to seriously challenge a governor who stirs strong opposition, or
just another rich, fly-by-night candidate?

It might just be wishful thinking, but she could be
closer to Kohl than to those two recent unknown Republican millionaires who ran
as pigs in a poke and turned out to be mostly pig.

Burke has expertise and experience in dealing with
the critical issue on which Walker is most vulnerable—jobs. As state secretary
of commerce, she fought to create jobs in Wisconsin during the historic
Republican recession created by the economic policies of President George W.
Bush.

An economic novice, Walker promised to create
250,000 jobs in his first term without a clue how to accomplish it. Well into
Walker’s third year, Wisconsin’s created only a dismal 80,000 jobs, one of the
worst jobs records in the nation.

It’s not difficult to see why. Walker replaced
Burke’s Department of Commerce with his own disastrous, partly privatized
Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. passing out millions of dollars to
corporations supporting his election without bothering even to keep track of
loans or whether any jobs were created.

Burke’s other strength, like Kohl’s, is her record
of philanthropy, using the fortune from her family’s success in building Trek
Bicycle Corp. in Waterloo to assist nonprofit organizations improving
communities throughout the state.

Oh, yeah. She’s also won an election. It was to the
Madison School Board, which puts her squarely on the side of education at a
time when nothing is more important to the future success of Wisconsin’s
citizens and businesses.

It’s also a time when Walker has totally devastated
education with the largest cuts in state history, alienating parents and school
districts throughout Wisconsin.

You also may have noticed she’s a woman at a time
when Republican males in the Legislature are crudely warring on women’s health
care and rights.

So, yeah, you may not know Burke yet, but you can see
why she could turn out to be a very strong candidate. And Burke and her
Wisconsin supporters should have plenty of money to inform every voter in the
state who she is and why she would be a better governor.

Don’t worry about a millionaire buying the election.
Millionaires will buy the next election no matter who wins.

Right-wing millionaires all over the country who
care nothing about Wisconsin already are building up an enormous re-election
fund to try to buy the election for Walker.

At least Burke, like Kohl, would be nobody’s
governor but yours.

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Joel McNally is a national-award-winning newspaper columnist and a longtime political commentator on Milwaukee radio and television. Since 1997, Joel has written a column for the Shepherd Express where he also was editor for two years.

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